How to get an object's property's value by property name?

Solution 1:

Sure

write-host ($obj | Select -ExpandProperty "SomeProp")

Or for that matter:

$obj."SomeProp"

Solution 2:

Expanding upon @aquinas:

Get-something | select -ExpandProperty PropertyName

Get-something | select -expand PropertyName

Get-something | select -exp PropertyName

I made these suggestions for those that might just be looking for a single-line command to obtain some piece of information and wanted to include a real-world example.

In managing Office 365 via PowerShell, here was an example I used to obtain all of the users/groups that had been added to the "BookInPolicy" list:

Get-CalendarProcessing [email protected] | Select -expand BookInPolicy

Just using "Select BookInPolicy" was cutting off several members, so thank you for this information!

Solution 3:

You can get a property by name using the Select-Object cmdlet and specifying the property name(s) that you're interested in. Note that this doesn't simply return the raw value for that property; instead you get something that still behaves like an object.

[PS]> $property = (Get-Process)[0] | Select-Object -Property Name

[PS]> $property

Name
----
armsvc

[PS]> $property.GetType().FullName
System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject

In order to use the value for that property, you will still need to identify which property you are after, even if there is only one property:

[PS]> $property.Name
armsvc

[PS]> $property -eq "armsvc"
False

[PS]> $property.Name -eq "armsvc"
True

[PS]> $property.Name.GetType().FullName
System.String

As per other answers here, if you want to use a single property within a string, you need to evaluate the expression (put brackets around it) and prefix with a dollar sign ($) to declare the expression dynamically as a variable to be inserted into the string:

[PS]> "The first process in the list is: $($property.Name)"
The first process in the list is: armsvc

Quite correctly, others have answered this question by recommending the -ExpandProperty parameter for the Select-Object cmdlet. This bypasses some of the headache by returning the value of the property specified, but you will want to use different approaches in different scenarios.

-ExpandProperty <String>

Specifies a property to select, and indicates that an attempt should be made to expand that property

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849895.aspx

[PS]> (Get-Process)[0] | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name
armsvc

powershell variables

Solution 4:

Try this :

$obj = @{
    SomeProp = "Hello"
}

Write-Host "Property Value is $($obj."SomeProp")"

Solution 5:

Here is an alternative way to get an object's property value:

write-host $(get-something).SomeProp